For the past years, I have mostly shot digital when doing portrait shoots and other important shoots that involve use of colour. On my recent holiday trip to Denmark, I came across an old fashioned photography shop where they had a sale on «soon to expire» films. On this sale I found a five-pack of Kodak Portra 160, and I decided to give it a go.
I am one of those people who loves to develop films and I decided that colour or B&W, I’ll master the process myself. I did Colour development a few times some years ago, and knew more or less what I was going into, with water baths and temperature control. For chemistry I bought the Tetenal Home kit, which I have to say was really easy to use and fairly idiot proof if you do monitor the temperature.
I stuck the Kodak roll into my Nikon F80, and brought it to a TFP-shoot with the lovely Hedda and her guitar. The Portra is well known for giving the nicest skin tones and I was curious about this as well.
I shot the film at box speed and kept it as I normally keep exposed film for a few days until I had the time to develop it.
I was amazed how simple and straight forward the Tetenal process really is. Remembering earlier experience with C41 as rather difficult I had no problems at all mastering this process. I used a Paterson tank and used the «stirring tap» to rotate the reel in the tank, as the process is made for rotation.
I am very happy with how the images turned out. The images you see here are untouched and straight from the Plustek Scanner I use for all my entries.
You can master any process.
“A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.”
Edward Steichen
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